3 ms·

> Seems like everyone, everywhere is overworked, underpaid, and under supported. How much longer can we frogs survive the boiling? I'm Australian. In Australi

> Seems like everyone, everywhere is overworked, underpaid, and under supported. How much longer can we frogs survive the boiling? I'm Australian. In Australia, if you are forced to work overtime the rate of pay goes up, by 50% or if it's extreme, double. As a consequence "underpaid" isn't a common complaint of people working lots of overtime. This has some negative consequences of course. If labour is plentiful you can have lots of people on hand and pay them on an hours-worked basis. The same deal applies - if you go beyond 40 hours a week their rate of pay goes up, but that shouldn't happen if labour is plentiful and management is on the ball. But if, as in this case labour isn't plentiful, then they are going to have to fix it some other way - like paying to train more staff. What the employers can't do is offload the problem entirely onto their employees, so there are forces compelling them to get their act together. The OP makes it sound like the dynamic is very different in the US.

markdown 7mo ago
Things are quite DOGEy in the US.
Computer0 7mo ago
Workers in these jobs in the US have less protections than the private sector as they are deemed imperative to operating the country. As such it is illegal for them to strike for better wages, but they do receive 1.5x wages during their mandatory overtime work, and have a base wage over twice that of the annual median income, before their significant overtime income. I think the burn out is a bigger cause.
jacquesm 7mo ago
I've met truck drivers in the US that were driving 16 hours per day. I'm not sure if it is legal or not but it certainly wasn't considered exceptional. It's insane the kind of pressure some jobs put you under. Now ATC has obviously more potential for misery than a truck driver, still a passenger bus / truck collision isn't a small thing either.
- rabidonrails 7mo ago
  Truck drivers and the hours they're on the road need to be logged per law. Most of this is done (or perhaps MUST be done) electronically.
- ics 7mo ago
  16 hours is generally not allowed unless there are severe adverse conditions, but it's only recently with ELD (Electronic Logging Device) mandates that these rules are being forced to a degree. Before that, many drivers would simply go as many hours as they humanly could to keep moving. See: https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-hours-service-regulations https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-...
  - jacquesm 7mo ago
    This was a while ago and I was absolutely shocked. In Europe they'd impound your truck.
  - jcgrillo 7mo ago
    They would keep multiple overlapping logbooks so they could always present a "legitimate" log to DOT.
    - chasd00 7mo ago
      I forgot about this, you're right. I remember some of my family members talking about this. (much of my extended family was in trucking)
    - ethbr1 7mo ago
      It's mostly around engineering whether you have enough downtime to "move" your "driven" hours into. For long-haul it's probably a bit different, but other routes have a lot of annoying delays. E.g. waiting at a port, waiting for a trailer replacement, waiting for receiving, etc. Afaik, these are all classified as driving hours for logbook purposes. It creates a situation where you legally have to park a truck on the side of the road when you hit your cap, even though 1/2 of your day might have been waiting around for something. Imho, that's a bit ridiculous, and I'm sympathetic to shadow logbooks there. For the 16 hours straight cross-country pounders, less-so. But long-haul is what autonomous trucking will likely eat first.
jjmarr 7mo ago
The USA has time and a half overtime above 40 hours as well under the FLSA. This applies to ATC. Unfortunately, this is now priced into certain government jobs in the USA and people rely on it. Americans see the obscene amounts of money and hours as a challenge until they actually burn out. ATC isn't even the worst offender. Law enforcement and prison guards can pull 100+ hours a week on a regular basis. This is how prison guards can pull $400k/year.
- FireBeyond 7mo ago
  > ATC isn't even the worst offender. Law enforcement and prison guards can pull 100+ hours a week on a regular basis. This is how prison guards can pull $400k/year. There's definitely elements of that - but part of that is that many pensions are based on the two highest earning years of your career, so it's "common" among cops when they are planning to retire to spend two years working every possible piece of OT available, to maximize their pension income.
  - SZJX 7mo ago
    Sounds like a weird incentivization for sure. Why not base the pension on the average over all the years worked as in many other countries? When you offer such incentives, people will naturally work in such a way.
    - ralferoo 7mo ago
      Because you'll loose half a career's worth of inflationary salary rises that way. Also, women might work part time after having children which would skew the average annual salary down. Over a 40 year career, just from inflation alone, you'd be getting about half your final salary that way, even ignoring any increases later on from being better qualified or taking on more responsibility. Mind you, in the UK, defined benefits pension schemes are very rare nowadays, but where they exist they are defined as a percentage of the final year salary with that company, so the highest 2 year thing seems a bit weird to me but for a different reason.
      - 7mo ago
thaumasiotes 7mo ago
> The OP makes it sound like the dynamic is very different in the US. The obvious reason that US air traffic control has been understaffed for "a while now" is that, roughly a decade ago, the FAA caved in to political pressure to stop having so many white controllers by decommissioning any hiring practices that posed a risk of hiring white controllers. This meant the size of the workforce froze, stressing the system. Tracing Woodgrains went into a good amount of depth on the scandal: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...
- wahern 7mo ago
  That scandal exacerbated the problem, but there would still be a severe shortage had it never happened. The core issues, pay and grueling hours, predate that scandal by decades.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

markdown 7mo ago

Things are quite DOGEy in the US.

Computer0 7mo ago

Workers in these jobs in the US have less protections than the private sector as they are deemed imperative to operating the country. As such it is illegal for them to strike for better wages, but they do receive 1.5x wages during their mandatory overtime work, and have a base wage over twice that of the annual median income, before their significant overtime income. I think the burn out is a bigger cause.

jacquesm 7mo ago

I've met truck drivers in the US that were driving 16 hours per day. I'm not sure if it is legal or not but it certainly wasn't considered exceptional. It's insane the kind of pressure some jobs put you under. Now ATC has obviously more potential for misery than a truck driver, still a passenger bus / truck collision isn't a small thing either.

rabidonrails 7mo ago
Truck drivers and the hours they're on the road need to be logged per law. Most of this is done (or perhaps MUST be done) electronically.
ics 7mo ago
16 hours is generally not allowed unless there are severe adverse conditions, but it's only recently with ELD (Electronic Logging Device) mandates that these rules are being forced to a degree. Before that, many drivers would simply go as many hours as they humanly could to keep moving. See: https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-hours-service-regulations https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/regulations/hours-service/summary-...
- jacquesm 7mo ago
  This was a while ago and I was absolutely shocked. In Europe they'd impound your truck.
- jcgrillo 7mo ago
  They would keep multiple overlapping logbooks so they could always present a "legitimate" log to DOT.
  - chasd00 7mo ago
    I forgot about this, you're right. I remember some of my family members talking about this. (much of my extended family was in trucking)
  - ethbr1 7mo ago
    It's mostly around engineering whether you have enough downtime to "move" your "driven" hours into. For long-haul it's probably a bit different, but other routes have a lot of annoying delays. E.g. waiting at a port, waiting for a trailer replacement, waiting for receiving, etc. Afaik, these are all classified as driving hours for logbook purposes. It creates a situation where you legally have to park a truck on the side of the road when you hit your cap, even though 1/2 of your day might have been waiting around for something. Imho, that's a bit ridiculous, and I'm sympathetic to shadow logbooks there. For the 16 hours straight cross-country pounders, less-so. But long-haul is what autonomous trucking will likely eat first.

jjmarr 7mo ago

The USA has time and a half overtime above 40 hours as well under the FLSA. This applies to ATC. Unfortunately, this is now priced into certain government jobs in the USA and people rely on it. Americans see the obscene amounts of money and hours as a challenge until they actually burn out. ATC isn't even the worst offender. Law enforcement and prison guards can pull 100+ hours a week on a regular basis. This is how prison guards can pull $400k/year.

FireBeyond 7mo ago
> ATC isn't even the worst offender. Law enforcement and prison guards can pull 100+ hours a week on a regular basis. This is how prison guards can pull $400k/year. There's definitely elements of that - but part of that is that many pensions are based on the two highest earning years of your career, so it's "common" among cops when they are planning to retire to spend two years working every possible piece of OT available, to maximize their pension income.
- SZJX 7mo ago
  Sounds like a weird incentivization for sure. Why not base the pension on the average over all the years worked as in many other countries? When you offer such incentives, people will naturally work in such a way.
  - ralferoo 7mo ago
    Because you'll loose half a career's worth of inflationary salary rises that way. Also, women might work part time after having children which would skew the average annual salary down. Over a 40 year career, just from inflation alone, you'd be getting about half your final salary that way, even ignoring any increases later on from being better qualified or taking on more responsibility. Mind you, in the UK, defined benefits pension schemes are very rare nowadays, but where they exist they are defined as a percentage of the final year salary with that company, so the highest 2 year thing seems a bit weird to me but for a different reason.
    - 7mo ago

thaumasiotes 7mo ago

> The OP makes it sound like the dynamic is very different in the US. The obvious reason that US air traffic control has been understaffed for "a while now" is that, roughly a decade ago, the FAA caved in to political pressure to stop having so many white controllers by decommissioning any hiring practices that posed a risk of hiring white controllers. This meant the size of the workforce froze, stressing the system. Tracing Woodgrains went into a good amount of depth on the scandal: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...

wahern 7mo ago
That scandal exacerbated the problem, but there would still be a severe shortage had it never happened. The core issues, pay and grueling hours, predate that scandal by decades.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]